Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: High dudgeon

Now here is a phrase I've used before without really thinking about it. (Confession: for a long time, I thought it was high dungeon, not high dudgeon.) So what the heck is a dudgeon anyway? And if it's a high dudgeon vs a low dudgeon? It's all a bit of a mystery to me...
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Turns out, this phrase is a bit of a mystery all around. From World Wide Words, we have this:

...[Dudgeon] is one of a distressingly large group of words for which we have no idea of their origins. The group includes a couple of others also ending in -udgeon: bludgeon and curmudgeon.
Dudgeon means a state of anger, resentment, or offence and often turns up as in dudgeon or in high dudgeon The Oxford English Dictionary can’t give its source, though it’s sure it’s not from the Welsh word dygen, meaning malice or resentment, which has been suggested in the past. It does point to endugine, a word recorded just once, in 1638, with the same sense, which might have given us a clue, but doesn’t help at all.
It also records another sense of the word, itself mysterious, for a kind of wood used by turners, especially the handles of knives or daggers. It has been suggested it was another name for boxwood. It appears in Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “I see thee still, / And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, / Which was not so before.” Later the word was used for a dagger whose handle was made of this wood.
It just might be that a state of anger or resentment could have led to the grabbing of a dudgeon knife with intent to redress a slight, but there’s no evidence whatever of the connection.

The Online Etymological Dictionary gives a similar shrug of the shoulders:

Dudgeon (n.) "feeling of offense, resentment, sullen anger," 1570s, duggin, of unknown origin. One suggestion is Italian aduggiare "to overshadow," giving it the same sense development as umbrage. No clear connection to earlier dudgeon (late 14c.), a kind of wood used for knife handles, which is perhaps from French douve "a stave," which probably is Germanic. The source also has been sought in Celtic, especially Welsh dygen "malice, resentment," but OED reports that this "appears to be historically and phonetically baseless."

You can also read a bit more about this phrase at the Grammarphobia blog, right here. All in all, it seems that knives are involved. Very dangerous, if the person gripping the knife happens to be in high dudgeon.

... Is this a dagger which I see before me? (If it's being wielded in high dudgeon, I'm outta here.)
[By Alphonse Mucha - Art Renewal Center – description, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8879553]